


Burning White

by MyriadMusings



Category: RWBY
Genre: Gen, She doesn't know what she is, Some references to the Schnee family being racist against Faunus and Winter is no exception, Winter is the Winter Maiden, fight to the death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 18:11:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17208392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyriadMusings/pseuds/MyriadMusings
Summary: No one would tell her what she is, and now, at the end, she would never know.It's almost enough to break her.





	Burning White

What, exactly, was something worth dying for?

 

Plenty of things. Ideals. People. A myriad of concepts and comforts to think of, knowing that to see them die would be more painful than death itself. That’s what Winter tells herself as she throws herself into the throng of Grimm, hearing Weiss shrieking behind her.

 

In the grand scheme of things, she never really was that important, she muses as her sword penetrates where the heart of a Beowolf would be, if these creatures had hearts to begin with. Her sword is out of the carcass and stabbing through another before the first creature disintegrates. No one told her much. Proving herself had proved an impossible endeavour, one that required more than just time and effort, but luck, being at the right place at the right time, connections...

 

At this point, she didn’t have any of those things.

 

Winter conjures a glyph, still warming up. She raises herself above the land-based Grimm, with some Lancers flying up to chase her. A spin, an array of harsh strikes, and the Lancers are nothing she needs to worry about… at least until the next swarm arrives.

 

The sea of Grimm is endless. Winter knows that this is a suicide mission, but she also knows that she’s expendable. She knows the least. Everyone else is following a plan she never fit into.

 

It’s a bitter pill to swallow.

 

Winter dashes to an empty patch of ground, summoning a swarm of Death Stalkers to keep the other Grimm at bay while she concentrates. She feels it, in her core, white like snow and burning like ice. White hot, in its own way. It bursts forth, and Winter feels this abnormal power burn her from the inside out. She feels it flow through her eyes, like a blast of cold air painting her eyelashes with ice crystals.

 

Ironwood never told her what she was. Winter wonders if he ever knew to begin with.

 

Just how low on the ladder _was_ she?

 

As she throws herself back into the fray, a distraction, an obstacle, something to keep everyone else safe for just a little longer, she hears the voices. It’s Weiss. It’s Weiss’ teammates and friends. It’s Qrow. It’s the young man who is also an old man and the old lady. They sound shocked. Confused.

 

Did they _know_ what she is?

 

_**Did they really know everything she had been working so hard to find out about?** _

 

Winter takes out her fury at this revelation on a Boarbatusk. It sounds like it’s screaming and Winter relishes the noise.

 

Some Grimm are making it past her, pushing forward to the people in the know, and for a moment Winter entertains the idea of letting them die, just out of spite for keeping her at the bottom of the ladder, but she doesn’t. She never could. Winter is a soldier, through and through, and she knows her place. She needs to make sure they survive.

 

This strange power that she has, a power that she got some time ago and was told to conceal with no explanations, helps her dart and dash much faster than usual. The Grimm trying to slip by don’t stand a chance, but Winter remains outnumbered. She’ll keep fighting until they’re all safe and far away, and even past that. She’ll fight until there are so few Grimm to ravage the surrounding area that they can be picked off.

 

She’ll make sure Weiss lives.

 

A wall of ice juts upward to the sky, out of nowhere, and any remaining Grimm trying to get the best of her are trapped. For now. Winter knows that it’s only a matter of time. Even as she fights, destroying every monster that comes into her path, she’s still wrapping her head around the fact that  _ she’s about to die. _

 

Weiss’ screams are growing fainter. She hears Qrow yelling and wonders if he’s the one taking her away.

 

She hopes he’s not laying a dirty, disgusting, booze-stained finger on her little sister, even if it saves her.

 

Winter lets more of her power out; Grimm around her are falling like dominoes, and it seems so easy, but she knows that it’s still hopeless. She doesn’t know how to control this power, and the white hot energy is pushing her past limits she never thought she could reach.

 

It’s a race. A race to see if this power or the Grimm kill her first.

 

Winter fights. Winter fights and fights and fights and she thinks.

 

She thinks of Weiss. She thinks of Weiss’ team, of sweet and kind Ruby who is the sort of person Weiss always needed in her life, of the blonde girl named Yang who seemed ready to take a bullet for anyone in her team, of the Faunus… Weiss had said her name was Blake.

 

A Faunus. Weiss seemed ready to defend her from anyone. Even from herself. From Winter.

 

Winter realises, far too late in her life and far too close to her death, that maybe Faunus really were _people_ as well, and it leaves a cold pit in the middle of the painful heat as she realises just how much her father and mother and kingdom had influenced her into believing that some people were truly secondary.

 

Her name is Blake, and even though the thought is still foreign and is against everything she's ever known, she will be the first and last Faunus that Winter will ever be able to protect.

 

A claw tears at her leg, and Winter feels pain and blood and fear.

 

Her death today would be a tragedy. It would be a scar that would never truly heal in Weiss’ life, like the one crossing her eye, though this one would go deeper, beneath the skin where no one could see it. Yet in the grand scheme of things, Winter Schnee would just be a name in the list of fallen soldiers.

 

What a lonely, cold thought. It’s so empty and makes her life seem like such an insignificance in the grand scheme of things. Missed by only one person.

 

Winter’s vision blurs and a small hot streak runs down her face and she’s crying for the first time since she was a teenager. She stumbles and that one mistake is enough for the Grimm to swarm around her. Winter knows she’s beaten.

 

She thinks of Qrow. What had caused him to be the way he was? And why was he given everything she always worked for but never received? Too little too late, once again, Winter realises just how closed off she had been from learning more about the world around her. She knew nothing about the people leading Weiss, her most important person, into a war she wouldn’t be able to see the end of.

 

She thinks of Ozpin. She thinks of Oscar. Just who was he? Either of them? Would he have told her anything?

 

Some limb of some sort knocks into her gut, winding her and Winter falls to the ground, her sword knocked out of her reach and then blocked by a massive Grimm that she can’t quite see because her vision is blurring, no longer only from tears.

 

She thinks of the knight and the loud girl and the quiet boy and wonder what roles they play in everything.

 

She wonders what role she even played.

 

She feels another tear, in her arm, and screams, feeling power seep out, like she’s about to explode and take everything with her.

 

She thinks of her useless drunk mother. Of her cold, cruel father. Of her pampered snot of a brother. Were they always irredeemable?

 

Was she irredeemable as well?

 

Winter can’t see anymore. Everything is white and she feels Grimm darting forward and being pushed back and she can’t tell what’s happening anymore.

 

Did she kill enough? Did they escape?

 

Winter thinks of Weiss one more time.

 

_ I’m sorry… I’m sorry for all the pain I’ll cause you. _

 

Winter feels a chill, strong and shocking, her name personified, and one last surge of power. She hears the sound of bodies falling and not coming back up.

 

Everything is white.

 

* * *

 

Far away from the battlefield, Weiss screams as a new power enters her body. Everyone knows.


End file.
